The Proposal -- part 3

.....7 hours later, I changed my stand, and was in a call with her again.

The call that night was more of clarifications and justifications. While I threw tantrums at her wary attitude of showing up with “we are just friends” male friend, she expressed complete innocence and asked me the reason for my not-so friendly behavior.Though I wasn’t explicit with the reason for my insane behavior, I wanted her to figure it out.God forbid..!! but it was not a Da Vinci’s cryptogram that she could’nt have figured it out.I was terribly upset with her and wanted to convey the same.I cut short her, asked her to forgive me and never call me back again.I followed this by abruptly cutting the call.Am not sure if she heard my hastily pronounced words, but she did get the message.Nature once again proved that two opposite sexes cant be just friends for long.I felt like trashing my phone, but hesitated doing so after realizing how severely it would affect my financial woes.I went to the terrace where the entire class except me re-joiced around a bon-fire, couples cuddled,chicks danced while the rest boozed.I got a drink for my self, went along the railing of the 7 th floor, looked down on the busy street,gushed down the large peg of scotch and cursed myself again for making people come down to Hyderabad for the industrial visit.

6 months after the Hyderabad incident, which had made me more serious in life, I got recruited by one of the finest IT exporter of the country.It offered me a decent package.The turn of events made me call her again.Perhaps this was a great news and she was the 1 st person after my family whom I wanted to speak at that very instance.In the past many months, she had made numerous attempts to reach me via email,SMS, calls and messenger.I remained unavailable for her most of the time.With time, my grudge at her had almost negated and I realized that I should have at least given a chance for her to talk.The placements had oozed in a fresh fervor of confidence in me. Without a slightest of doubt I called her up.It took more than a few rings for her to take the call.I guess she never anticipated me calling her.Before she could speak up a word, I broke the news and said sorry for my attitude in the last few months at the same time.Though it did not make sense, but we reconciled in the next few minutes.

The Hyderabad incident did leave some scars on our healthy relationship which ceased to be so thereafter.The frequency of calls dropped to once in a couple of months and more than being flirtious and romantic, we started being cautious and pretentious of the usage of our words and the context of our conversation.You know its time to move on when you have an awkward silence over the phone, look for topics to actually talk, say words like hmm, yeah its fine…you tell me.These are the initial signs of the people not actually interested in continuing the conversation but have to, for the very sake of not hurting the person at the end.Its amusing because people on both sides feel just the same, but fear being frank enough about it.With a mutual understanding, the calls dropped..so did the internet chats and the only time we spoke to each other in the final year was at each other’s birthday.I wasn’t sure if I would follow the trend next year too.

Finally I made my way out of the college, earned a graduate degree and had a job at hand.It was the 1st Sunday of August when after a wait for more than 2 months, I finally got the call for joining.It was a welcome respite from my neighbors’ who I guess found me an unwanted element and often inquired about my joining.Some of them went a step ahead and asked me my package and often replied to that by giving reference to some of their distant kin’s son, a product of an IIT, who’s package was a staggering 4-5 times of what I had. Relief indeed..!!..though we haven’t spoken to each other ever since I left college, I was anticipating a call from her the whole day, never knowing the fact that she did the same.I went off to sleep early with mixed emotions and some unfulfilled desires.My joining call did elate me but could not convince me enough to take the initiative and call her up that day.I laid wide awake and kept the cell phone close to me, still clung onto my expectations.It was not more than a minute when I dozed off, that my cellphone vibrated with a message.It was couple of minutes before the clock struck 12.I always believed life to be a vicious cycle.It was like I slipped back a couple of years back.It ws her who had sent me the SMS.The message wished me a happy friendship’s day and ended with ‘expected you to call me atleast on this day..”..it followed with a couple of sad smileys.I had an instant feeling of remorse and guilt.I didn’t know what to do and wasn’t sure if I should actually call her up at this time in the night.I found it safest to SMS her back.I went blank when I opened pressed the reply option to the message.I kept my phone aside, slid under the blanket ,closed my eyes and tried to sleep with a guilty heart and remorseful consciousness.Few minutes later a tear rolled from my left eye and I sobbed for some time before I finally fell asleep.

I was thinking about her again while driving my bike on my way to the city booking center for my tickets.I didn’t notice that I was full on accelerator and the speedo-meter had crossed 70kmph.Just when I breached the speed of 80kmph on my splendor, I saw a dog crossing the road unwarranted of the speeding bike.My heart skipped a beat, and I tried to push both the rear and fore brakes at the same time.While my right leg failed to react in the short span of time, my right hand did what it should have, applied the front brake with full intensity.Physics and newton’s law of motion never seemed as dreadful as it was now.At a speed of 70kmph, the sudden brake on the front brakes proved nasty and it toppled the bike all over.The last thing I felt was being punished for what I did the last night as I lost consciousness on feeling extreme pain and seeing blood all around me.I opened my eyes 3 hours later to find bruises all over my body. The doctor informed me that I was lucky enough not to suffer from any head trauma or break any of the bones. I had stitches on 3 areas all over my body and I felt pain even on moving my head.